A SENSITIVE METHOD FOR DETERMINING CHLOROPHYLL b IN PLANT EXTRACTS

Abstract— A new method of using hydroxylamine as the reagent was developed to determine the concentrations of chlorophylls a and b in plant extracts accurately and sensitively. The method is based on the principle that hydroxylamine reacts in a short time with the aldehyde group of chlorophyll b in 95 per cent methanol at pH 5.8 to afford a derivative having a red band similar in position to the red band of chlorophyll a , while the spectrum of chlorophyll a is unaffected by the treatment with hydroxylamine. The method includes the measurements of absorbanlce for the mixture of a plant extract with hydroxylamine and for the reagent blank at a single wavelength, 666 mμ, and the concentrations of chlorophylls a and b are calculated from the absorbance value for the reagent blank and the increment of absorbance due to the reaction. By measuring this increment directly by difference photometry, one can determine a low concentration of chlorophyll b relative to chlorophyll a . The contents of chlorophylls in matured and etiolated leaves were determined by the method, and the errors included in this method were shown to be smaller than those in a commonly used technique including the measurements at two different wavelengths.     

Syntheses and antitumor activities of N6,N6-dimethyladenosine carboxylate analogues

Several analogues substituted with fatty acid at the 2'-, 3'-, or 5'-position of the ribose moiety of N6,N6-dimethyladenosine were synthesized and tested for antitumor activity against cultured cells of L1210 leukemia and/or Ehrlich ascites. The cytotoxicity and increase of life span obtained with congeners in the N6,N6-dimethyladenosine 3'- or 5'-substituted series were comparable to in vitro or several times better in vivo than those of the mother compound.     

Dipole moments of (styrene-p-chlorostyrene) triblock copolymers in solutions

(Styrene-p-chlorostyrene) triblock copolymers of the ABA and BAB types (A—polystyrene; B—poly-p-chlorostyrene) were prepared by anionic polymerization and their conformational behaviours in solutions were studied from measurements of the dipole moments. Two solvents, toluene and cumene, were used for the study; toluene is a good solvent for both polystyrene and poly-p-chlorostyrene whereas cumene is a selective solvent, good for polystyrene but poor for poly-p-chlorostyrene. It was found that the dipole moments of the block copolymers measured in toluene are the same for the ABA and BAB copolymers; in cumene however the dipole moment of the BAB copolymer is smaller than that of the ABA copolymer. The results give an additional support to our previous conclusion that the conformation of the block copolymers in a good solvent such as toluene could be approximated with a pseudo-random coil form; in a selective solvent, however, some anomalies take place in the conformation of the block copolymers, as deduced from intrinsic viscosity, osmotic pressure and light scattering measurements.